After the surprise dismissal of Bruno Maquart, the Palais de la Découverte is on tenterhooks

The news came abruptly on Thursday, June 12 at 8 p.m.: following the Council of Ministers held the same day, Bruno Maquart was ousted from the presidency of Universcience, the public institution that has overseen the Palais de la Découverte and the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie since 2009.

The Élysée Palace's decision to shorten Bruno Maquart's second term has rekindled concerns in the scientific community about the future of the Palais de la Découverte, whose outreach efforts are often presented as a model for raising awareness. A petition published on June 13 on Change.org, signed by numerous scientists, points out that " the teams at Universcience, as well as many external service providers, have been working for five years to reopen the Palais de la Découverte, and significant budgets have already been spent ." In an op-ed in Le Monde published the same day, some fifty representatives of international scientific institutions called on France to guarantee the future of the Palais de la Découverte.

After four years of work and many delays, this flagship of science, installed in 1937 within the Palais d'Antin, at the Grand Palais on the right bank of the Seine, finally seemed to be on track. In February, Emmanuel Macron gave a televised interview there as a prelude to the Summit for Action on Artificial Intelligence. This teaser came at just the right time before the Universcience press conference on March 27, optimistically titled "There's something new under the sun" to announce the Premières ondes festival and an exhibition on artificial intelligence in partnership with the Quai des savoirs in Toulouse.

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